
Glass. t-*t il 
Book Jyg^ 



PRESENTED BV 







CONCERNING A 
FULL UNDERSTANDING OF 

THE SOUTHERN ATTITUDE 
TOWARD SLAVERY 

BY 

JOHN DOUGLASS VAN HORNE 




Reprinted from the July number ot 

The Sewanee Review 

i 9 2 i 



CONCERNING A 
FULL UNDERSTANDING OF 

THE SOUTHERN ATTITUDE 
TOWARD SLAVERY 

BY 

JOHN DOUGLASS VAN HORNE 




Reprinted from the July number of 

The Sewanee Review 

ii 9 2 i 



VS4 



Gift 
Author 
8£P <f> Of I 



THE SOUTHERN ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY 

"And I also told Mark how H. C. Bunner had confessed to me 
that he had never fully understood the Southern attitude toward 
slavery as a peculiar institution not to be apologized for but rather 
to be venerated as virtuously righteous, until he read the record of 
Huck's long struggle with himself to refrain from sending Jim 
back into the servitude from which he was escaping." — Brander 
Matthews. 

A writer on The Ethical Aspect of Slavery says that modern 
moralists, familiar with a society from which slavery has been 
eliminated and having before them the bad historical record 
of slavery, are more inclined than older moralists to emphasize 
arguments against it and less inclined to lay stress upon argu- 
ments in its favor. 1 The modern moralists here meant are 
persons respectful of the authority of their elders, but they have 
not escaped the influence of a changed environment. What con- 
fronted their predecessors was "a condition — not a theory", nor 
yet a mere record. Even Peter and Paul, recognizing a long- 
established and well-sanctioned system, fell back upon preaching 
to slaves obedience and to masters mercy. 

Probably not a few people to-day in the North conscientiously 
seek to know the truth about Southern slavery, but a bare record 
will never familiarize them with it to the degree of understanding 
possessed by many Northern men who lived through the con- 
troversy over slavery. "The North has the principles, but the 
South has the Negroes." It is presumptuous to enlarge upon a 
saying like this. Nevertheless, it is well to bear in mind that 
the North did not monopolize the principles nor the South the 
Negroes, because the known practice in the South of principles 
with respect to slaves and the presence in the North of Negroes 
whose condition in freedom was not enviable enabled conservative 
Northern men to understand the real difficulties of the situation. 
And this understanding long kept them clear of the influence of 
the extremists, who, as Daniel Webster said, were "disposed 
to mount upon some particular duty as upon a war-horse and to 



1 Rev. James J. Fox, in the Catholic Encyclopadia. 



4 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

drive furiously on, upon and over all other duties" standing in 
the way. There were other considerations than the then potent 
doctrine of State Rights. Slavery was virtually a part of the 
environment of these conservative men. Not a few had known 
it as existing in the North, and many lived near it, if not with 
it. They knew how it was carried on and how the slaves were 
treated; they had relations of friendship or of business with 
Southern slaveholders; they understood that their Southern 
contemporaries were not guilty of introducing slavery into 
the country ; they saw how deeply rooted the system was and 
how close and extensive the relation was between Southern pro- 
duction and Northern and foreign industry ; and they appreciated 
the difficulty and the peril of emancipation — especially of prema- 
ture action. The abolitionist demand for immediate and un- 
conditional emancipation without compensation appealed neither 
to their reason nor to their sense of justice. At an early day 
the abolitionists discovered that their true mission was to convert 
the North, and in 1831 William Lloyd Garrison declared: — 

"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the 
minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject 
of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence 
that a greater revolution was to be effected in the free 
States — and particularly in New England — than at the 
South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more 
active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, 
and apathy more frozen, than among the slave-owners 
themselves." a 

There is comfort to some minds, perhaps, but not unvarnished 
truth in the notion that with respect to slavery a 'good' Northern 
attitude was always opposed to a 'bad' Southern attitude, and 
that the cause of emancipation and the cause of the Union went 
always hand in hand. By 1844 Garrison was asking whether 
there could be fellowship of light with darkness, or cooperation 
between Christ and Belial, but the North in general was still 
far from conversion to his views. War and much of it was 
required to stir up the people to anything like this pitch. In 

"* Library of Original Sources, Vol. IX, pp. 95-96. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 5 

his Ttiaddeus Stevens Mr. Samuel W. McCall says that too 
much of the abolitionist agitation was simply disruptive in 
its tendency, and, as conducted by the extremists, contributed 
in no small measure to the causes which produced secession and 
war, but that the force which rescued the slave and saved the 
country was the sentiment of union * — a sentiment, let me add, 
which the leading agitators successfully repressed, if they enter- 
tained it at all. In 1862 Abraham Lincoln said to an abo- 
litionist: — 

"In working in the anti-slavery movement you naturally 
come into contact with a good many people who agree with 
you, and possibly may overestimate the number in the 
country who hold such views. But the position in which I 
am placed brings me into some knowledge of opinions in all 
parts of the country and of many different kinds of people; 
and it appears to me that the great masses of this country 
care comparatively little about the Negro, and are anxious 
only for military successes." 4 

As Virginius Dabney puts it in his picture of Virginia life, 
The Story of Don Miff: " 'We come to save the Union — dash 
the niggers!' was the angry and universal reply of the Federal 
soldiers when our women jeered them on their supposed 
mission." As late as June, 1863, the Virginia abolitionist, 
Moncure D. Conway, then in London, wrote to James M. Mason, 
Confederate Commissioner in England, proposing, in exchange 
for emancipation of the slaves by the Confederate States, oppo- 
sition on the part of the Northern abolitionists and anti-slavery 
leaders (who, according to Conway, held the balance of power) 
to further prosecution of the war by the United States govern- 
ment. 5 Conway fell into some embarrassment by reason of this 
letter, partly, no doubt, because it was rather closely followed 
by the fall of Vicksburg and the battle of Gettysburg— events 
not calculated to encourage support of his proposal by his friends. 
The letter, however, not only represented his own wishes, but 
fairly reflected the original attitude of the persons with whom 



3 Samuel W. McCall : Thaddeus Stevens, pp. 133-135- 

4 Moncure Daniel Conway: Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 346- 

5 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 413. 



6 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

he had been associated here, and with whose countenance and 
material aid he had gone to England. He himself said: — 

"It has all along been their [the abolitionists'] avowed 
position that they are, to quote Wendell Phillips, 'willing 
to accept anything, union or disunion, on the basis of 
emancipation'." 6 

Garrison was outspoken for disunion if continuance of slavery 
were to be the alternative. Though he practised vituperation, he 
preached non-resistance; and in 1861 he said: "All Union-saving 
efforts are simply idiotic". 1 He was surprised when the South 
took precedence of himself in departing from the Union, if we 
may judge from his remark: "I had no idea that I should live 
to see death and hell secede". 8 

The Northern attitude or attitudes ranged in fact, through 
various phases, from indifference to fanaticism. Fanaticism 
made gradual headway, and constant agitation of the slavery 
question did much to excite the hatred essential to a war between 
two peoples or between two sections. A clamor not devoid of 
vulgarity began to deafen ears ready enough, no doubt, to hear 
reason, and finally all but stifled the voices of conservatism and 
conciliation. Such proceedings are sometimes called "arousing 
the public conscience". A good many consciences, however, 
were refractory. In 1846 the eminent lawyer and orator, Seargent 
S. Prentiss, a native of Maine, in an address to the New England 
Society of New Orleans, invoked curses upon "the traitorous lips, 
whether of Northern fanatic or Southern demagogue", that 
proposed disunion.'' In 1850 Daniel Webster, speaking "not as 
a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, 
and a member of the United States Senate", appealed to those 
whom be considered "sober-minded men at the North, consci- 
entious men . . . men not carried away by some fanatical idea 
or some false impression". When the crisis actually came there 
were many Northern men of excellent standing who, having no 
love oi slavery, yet wished to subordinate questions concerning 



'Moncure Daniel Conway: Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 423. 

7 Lindsay Swift : // 'illiam Lloyd Garrison, p. 318. * Ibid., p. 372. 

'George Lewis Prentiss: Memoir of S. S. Prentiss, Vol. II, p. 408. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 7 

it to the aim of preserving the Union. It would be foolish to 
disparage the ability and influence of Garrison and his associates 
as agitators, but it was war (a resort contrary to the professed 
principles of the abolitionist leader), prolonged and successful 
war, that finally inspired the Northern people in general with 
the exaltation about slavery which seems still to possess many 
of them. 10 

Much that I hear and read tends to convince me that while 
Northern opinion on Southern slavery is now more nearly uni- 
form than it was during the actual controversy, it is not so close 
to the truth as conservative Northern opinion then was. The 
passage placed at the head of this article seems to me a good 
example of that effect of misinformation which has been called 
"acquired ignorance". 

I cast no doubt upon the accuracy of Professor Brander 
Matthews's report of Mr. H. C. Bunner's 'confession', although 
it seems that the humor shown in Mr. Bunner's own works and 
vocation should have saved him from such an avowal. His full 
understanding seems to have amounted to the conviction that in 
general the Southern people (numbering millions), although 
guilty of something for which an apology at least was rationally 
due, were so perverse or so deluded as to believe that their fault, 
sin or crime was righteousness — even virtuous righteousness — 
worthy of veneration. As Huckleberry Finn was a creature of 
the nineteenth century, Mr. Bunner's Southerners must be 
assigned to that enlightened age. 

Now, it is true that there were in the South people who went 
to every conceivable length in defending slavery, and among 



10 "When the war began, not one-tenth of the people of the country would 
have favored immediate and unconditional abolition ; but in the three years' 
struggle [to 1864] sentiment ripened rapidly." — J. K. Hosmer: Outcome of 
the Civil War, Vol. XXI of The American Nation: A History, p. 1^5. In a 
note this author refers to James G. Blaine, who, in his Twenty Years of 
Congress, Vol. I, p. 504, says : "In the short space of three years, by the opera- 
tion of war, under the dread of national destruction, a great change had 
been wrought in the opinions of the people of the Loyal States. When the 
war began not one-tenth of the citizens of those States were in favor of 
immediate and unconditional emancipation. It is very doubtful whether 
in September, 1862, the proclamation of the President would have been sus- 
6f ined by a majority of the Northern people." 



8 The So7itkern Attitude Toward Slavery 

them persons who insisted upon the theory of divine sanction. 
What is more, these persons could cite weighty precedents ; and 
it is indeed not easy to show on Scriptural authority that slavery 
had not divine sanction. If the exponents of this view, however, 
represented a Southern attitude, they were neither numerous 
enough nor influential enough to make up the Southern attitude. 
I cannot help giving some significance to my own experience 
among Southern men, which has been fairly long and wide. I have 
never heard a defence of slavery based upon allegation of its 
sanctity, and I have never caught a Southerner in the act of 
venerating it. On the other hand, it must be admitted that no 
Southerner ever confided to me a wish to apologize for slavery 
in behalf of himself or of his neighbors. One obstacle to an 
apology may have been the difficulty of ascertaining to whom 
(on earth, at any rate) it should be made. "The 'institution' ", 
says Mr. McCall, "had existed in New England, and had 
vanished for the very good reason that it did not pay." This 
consideration and others did not commend the abolitionists of 
that region to the South as father-confessors. 

In the South there were virtuous men and righteous men and 
even some men deserving to be called, with more or less admi- 
ration, virtuously righteous. But in the matter of slavery the 
palm for virtuous righteousness never belonged to the South. 
Originally gained by Sir John Hawkins, England's pioneer in the 
slave trade, it finally descended to William Lloyd Garrison. 
When in one of his voyages his ships were becalmed and his 
Negroes were dying, Sir John took comfort in the pious reflec- 
tion that God would not suffer His elect to perish. This exhi- 
bition made a record that stood for three centuries, but it was at 
last surpassed on July 4th, 1854, when Garrison held at Fram- 
ingham, Massachusetts, what one of his friends modestly calls a 
"Judgment Day" — an indication, perhaps, that Garrison needed 
no election except by himself. On this solemn day, after Scrip- 
ture readings, Garrison proceeded to the "symbolic action" of 
burning first a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law, then copies of 
certain legal documents unpleasant in his sight, and finally a 
copy of the Constitution of the United States, "the source and 
parent of the other atrocities — a covenant with death and an 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 9 

agreement with hell" ; and after the incineration he commanded 
all the people to say "Amen!" 11 According to some reports, a 
copy ©f the Declaration of Independence was included in this 
burnt-offering, and apparently consistency required its sacrifice 
in order to round out the symbolic action. 

Like all other people, the Southerners were subject to the law 
announced by Voltaire's Candide at the close of his unfortunate 
wanderings: "II faut cultiver notre jardin". They had to make 
their living with the means at hand. Such being their most 
pressing earthly concern, they were not given, more than other 
people, to dwelling upon their faults or to turning their faults 
into imaginary virtues. It is absurd to suppose either that they 
labored under a continual sense of sin because of slavery or that 
they felt a pious exaltation because of their maintenance of an 
institution of fancied sanctity. 

** Naturally, Southern opinion on slavery was more nearly con- 
solidated than Northern opinion (especially after the days of 
slavery in the North), but it was not practically unanimous ex- 
cept under special conditions. It was varied by time and by cir- 
cumstance. It was sometimes eulogistic and sometimes de- 
nunciatory. Economic considerations led to condemnation of 
slavery in one place and to the fostering of it in another. Individ- 
uals and groups held different and at times contradictory views. 
Some men, for instance, upheld State Rights and opposed slav- 
ery, while others upheld slavery and despised State Rights. 

After all, however, the general attitude was not positive or 
conscious, but rather a natural acceptance of conditions that 
seemed natural. The abolitionist Conway had to undergo sev- 
eral changes of environment before he saw the enormity of slav- 
ery. Of his boyhood days in Virginia he says: — 

"The word 'slave' was not used. We spoke of 'free Ne- 
groes' and 'servants'. Those were the happy days of incon- 
sistency. Our Fourth-of-July orators talked grandly of the 
enormity of 'taxation without representation' and the right 
of every man to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' ; 
but the bondage of millions of dusky human beings was 
never thought of as a thing even to be explained in those days. 

11 Swift: Garrison, pp. 306-07. 



io The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

For myself, I did not know our servants were slaves, and 
dare say I repeated in the kitchen my favorite school dec- 
lamation ending 'Give me liberty or give me death!' .... 
It [slavery] was too close to my eyes to be seen." 12 

To those who believe that slavery was venerated the following 
extract from a letter written to Conway by his mother in 1856 
may be instructive: — 

"I am the greatest slave here at any season to the servants 
of our household, who are raised in such a state of depen- 
dence of thought and action that they will not even make 
an effort to make their own clothing — indeed are too stupid 
to know how unless I direct them. Oh, what a thral/dom to 
me — the white slave — mentally and bodily! I often think 
that if someone were to arouse me some morning from my 
sleep with the intelligence that everyone had left the prem- 
ises, I should feel such a sense of freedom and relief from 
responsibility (more oppressive as I grow older) that I 
should be heard singing Te Deum laudamus — could I but 
banish the knowledge that they would be in a state of ex- 
treme suffering and that their numerous babies would perish. 
If any abolitionist could know exactly what I have endured 
from over-pressure of work for thirty negroes for the last 
month, and the worry I have had to get them to do any 
work for themselves, they would look on me with greater 
pity than on them." 

In the same letter this lady speaks with scant respect of both 
"ultra pro-slavery men and abolitionists of the fire-and-fagot 
sort", and goes on to say that God's "greatest reformations have 
ever been commenced by the small human means without knowl- 
edge of what their efforts were to lead to, they only doing what 
duty personally required of them". 13 What Mrs. Conway and 
thousands of other Southern women venerated and sought faith- 
fully to discharge was the obligation to do their best for the 
creatures in their care. It came to be a saying that the most 
complete slave on a plantation was its mistress. 14 



12 Conway : Autobiography, Vol. I, pp. 29, 30, 89. 

13 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 250. 

14 Susan Dabney Smedes: Memorials of a Southern Planter, p. 191. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery n 

Not only in Virginia, but farther south, the worship of slavery- 
seems to have been "honored in the breach". In i827-*28 Cap- 
tain Basil Hall visited part of the cotton region, and wrote as 
follows:— 

"That slavery is an evil in itself, and eminently an evil 
in its consequences, no men that I have ever met with are 
more ready to grant than most of the American planters. 
That the time will come when it must cease to exist, is not, 
however, so general an opinion, but meanwhile it is admitted 
by all parties to be so completely beyond the reach of any 
human exertions that I consider the immediate abolition of 
slavery as one of the most profitless of all possible subjects 
of discussion." 15 

The experience of the young Conway was virtually the ex- 
perience of every child of a decent slave-holding family. The 
impression of the naturalness and propriety of the conditions 
into which one was born and amid which one grew up was seldom 
entirely destroyed ; but the tendency of the thoughtful who came 
to consider slavery more or less objectively was to find fault with 
it. The evil which was most manifest and which became graver 
as time went on was the economic strain and waste of slavery. 
This was, perhaps, the chief ground of Southern criticism or 
condemnation, but' it was by no means the only ground. Moral 
considerations led some of the South's best men to denounce 
slavery and to seek means to be rid of it. 16 The same sentiment 
existed and possibly was more widespread among thoughtful 
Southern women. 

The intrepid 'copperhead' Vallandigham declared that meddling 
abolitionism taught the South to search for and defend the 
assumed merits of slavery. Leaving out of consideration ec- 
centric individuals and such people as are now called 'cranks', 
I venture to say that extravagant pro-slavery pronouncements 
were almost invariably called forth by extravagant anti-slavery 
pronouncements. The South in general felt no need to defend 



15 Library of Original Sources, Vol. IX, p. 55. 

16 Beverley B. Munford : Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession, 
pp. 82-103 ; also Carl Schurz: Life of Henry Clay, Vol. I, p. 31, quoting re- 
marks of Clay in 1829 on the disadvantages of slavery. 



12 The Southern Attitude Toivard Slavery 

slavery until it was attacked. Possibly the defence would have 
been more temperate if the attack had been less violent and 
abusive. But the aim of the extreme abolitionists was to 
irritate, and their weapon was insult. How closely the temper 
of defence corresponded to the nature of assault may be seen in 
a well-known message addressed to the South Carolina Legis- 
lature in 1835 by Governor McDuffie. The character of the 
assault and the intent that underlay it are indeed beyond doubt. 
The process has been called "moral warfare waged against the 
South upon the institution of slavery". Of the abolitionists it 
has been said by a biographer of Garrison that "by provok- 
ing replies to their own exhaustless vocabulary of abuse and 
criticism they began to put the pro-slavery side on the de- 
fensive", 17 and of Garrison himself that in this sort of warfare 
he was a "sure strategist", having "a power to irritate not 
excelled even by Wendell Phillips". 18 Garrison's words were 
"hurled with the precision and, it must be added, with the 
deliberate desire to madden with which the banderillero throws 
his darts at the tortured bull". 19 Add to this that there were 
"abolitionists more denunciatory and reckless of speech than 
their leader", 20 and it is not surprising to learn that the pro- 
slavery heart was hardened as Pharaoh's heart was hardened. 
Without a hint of humorous intent, it has been remarked that 
Garrison was lovable and gentle when not in a vituperative mood, 
which reminds one of the saying of some French sage about 
Alexander the Great: "Alexandre, quand il n'assassinait pas ses 
amis, avait l'ame assez genereuse". It is hard to believe that 
Garrison could have even an equal as a moral warrior until we 
find that at a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety Miss Abby Kelley offered a resolution that "the sectarian 
organizations called churches are combinations of thieves, 
robbers, adulterers, pirates and murderers, and as such form 
the bulwark of American slavery". 21 

- To most of the Southerners who considered it, the problem 
of emancipating the slaves without removing them from the 

17 Swift : Garrison, p. 84. ™ Ibid., p. 84. 

"Ibid., p. 90. J " Ibid., p. 1 50. » Ibid., p. 227. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 13 

country seemed most difficult, if not insoluble. It baffled some 
of the best minds — notably the mind of Thomas Jefferson, an 
owner of slaves but a vehement enemy of slavery. 22 He gave 
much thought to the question of emancipation, and welcomed 
discussion of it, saying that "every plan should be advocated 
and every experiment tried which may do something towards 
the ultimate object" ; 2! but it is to be noted that in this matter 
he had not much confidence in "noisy pretenders to exclusive 
humanity". 24 Jefferson's opinions and the opinions of James 
Madison and others helped a later movement toward emancipation 
in Virginia. At one time this movement gave promise of success, 
and its actual success would have led to organized efforts for 
emancipation in the other Southern States, for at the time 
Virginia's prestige was great with them, and Virginia's practical 
example must have had a weighty influence. Moreover, there 
was a nucleus of emancipationist sentiment in the other States. - 
In the Virginia General Assembly of i83i-'32 several schemes 
of emancipation were considered, one of which was submitted 
by Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. In the 
course of the discussion slavery was bitterly denounced by men 
of high standing. No bill for actual emancipation was passed, 
but the House of Delegates, by a vote of 79 to 41, approved a 
measure providing for the deportation and colonization of Negroes 
then free or to become free, which was subsequently defeated in 
the Senate by only one vote. The sentiment for emancipation 
seems to have been stronger at that time than any opposition to 
it in principle, and the real stumbling-block was apparently the 
practical difficulty of freeing the slaves. 25 The measure that 
went through the House and barely failed in the Senate drew 
part of its support from the belief of emancipationists that many 
people would free slaves if means were provided to remove and 



22 See views of Jefferson and Clay and also of Abraham Lincoln, cited in 
Munford's Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery and Secession, pp. 75-81, 
183-184. 

23 William Elroy Curtis : The True Thomas Jefferson, p. 83. u Ibid., p. 86. 
15 As to the prevalence of the sentiment, see remarks of C. J. Faulkner 

cited by Munford in Virginia's Attitude, pp. 93-94 ; and as to the difficulties 
of emancipation, see pp. 159-184 of the same work. 



14 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

to colonize them. The free and open discussion of the question 
in the Assembly was fairly to be regarded as an entering wedge, 
and the prospect for definite future action seemed favorable. 
Yet the movement virtually stopped here; emancipationist 
sentiment, or, rather, its organized expression, subsided, 26 and 
there was no longer a well-grounded hope that in the near future 
Virginia would set a fruitful example. 

The main cause of this change seems clear. In 1884 Thomas 
S. Dabney, chief figure in a notable book, Memorials of a South- 
ern Planter, wrote in a letter to a relative: — 

"In 1832, I think it was, the South Hampton Insurrec- 
tion 27 occurred in Virginia, and stirred the State to its cen- 
tre, although only a dozen to twenty whites were murdered, 
according to my recollection. But the attempt was so bold 
that the people took a serious view of it. The Richmond 
Enquirer took ground for the gradual emancipation of the 
negroes. The Bruces, among the largest slaveholders in 
the State, took the stump on the same side, and the largest 
slaveholder in my county of Gloucester made a speech (which 
I heard) in favor of the measure. The State was rapidly 
drifting into it when the Northern abolitionists undertook 
to advise and cheer us on in the good cause. Agitation in 
Virginia ceased. Those who had openly espoused the cause 
took back their word, the Enquirer ceased to advocate it, 
and the old State relapsed into her old views and remained 
there till her negroes were taken from her by violence." 28 

With respect to the cause of the change described by the 
writer of this letter, he is corroborated by a witness who also 
lived through these events. This is Daniel Webster, who used 
the checking of the emancipationist movement in Virginia to 
illustrate the harm done by the abolitionists. Webster said: — 



26 That the sentiment still actuated individuals is shown by the continuance 
of emancipation through deed or testament. — Munford: Virginia's Attitude, 
p. 114. It has been estimated that at least 100,000 slaves were freed volun- 
tarily by Virginians alone, a number much exceeding the total freed by law in 
all the North. — James Curtis Ballagh : History of Slavery in Virginia, p. 144. 

27 The Southampton Insurrection, led by Nat Turner, occurred in 1831, 
and preceded the legislative session referred to. 

''•Mrs. Smedes: Southern Planter, p. 312. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 15 

"I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the lead- 
ers of these [abolitionist] societies, but I am not blind to 
the consequences of their proceedings. I cannot but see 
what mischiefs their interference with the South has pro- 
duced. And is it not plain to every man ? Let any gentle- 
man who entertains doubts on this point recur to the de- 
bates in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832, and he will 
see with what freedom a proposition made by Mr. Jefferson 
Randolph for the gradual abolition of slavery was discussed 
in that body. Everyone spoke of slavery as he thought; 
very ignominious and disparaging epithets were applied to 
it. . . . That was in 1832. As has been said by the hon- 
orable member from South Carolina, these Abolition Socie- 
ties commenced their course of action in 1835. It is said, 
I do not know how true it may be, that they sent incendiary 
publications into the slave States; at any rate, they at- 
tempted to arouse, and did arouse, very strong feeling; in 
other words, they created great agitation in the North 
against Southern slavery. Well, what was the result ? The 
bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, 
their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, 
which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery 
and was opening out for the discussion of the question, 
drew back and shut itself up in its castle. I wish to know 
whether anybody in Virginia can now talk as openly as Mr. 
Randolph, Governor McDowell, and others talked in 1832 
and sent their remarks to the press ? We all know the fact 
and we all know the cause, and everything that these agi- 
tating people have done has been, not to enlarge, but to 
restrain, not to set free, but to bind faster, the slave pop- 
ulation of the South." 

The "honorable member from South Carolina" seems to have 
been in error if he really meant that abolitionist agitation did 
not begin until 1835. In 1831 Garrison, who had already devel- 
oped his policy of insisting upon immediate and unconditional 
emancipation, was editing The Liberator in Boston, and he 
made the Southampton Insurrection the occasion of a special de- 
nunciation of slavery. Agitation was going on before Garrison 
became identified with it and before the Rev. William E. Chan- 
ning said in 1828: — 

"My fear in regard to our efforts against slavery is that we 
shall make the case worse by arousing sectional pride and 



1 6 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

passion for its support, and that we shall only break the 
country into two great parties, which may shake the founda- 
tions of government." 29 

One of Garrison's expectations, by the way, was to "shake the 
nation". 30 It is true, however, that agitation was particularly 
active and offensive about 1835, and then and for years there- 
after embarrassed or repelled friends of emancipation in Vir- 
ginia and elsewhere. The effect in Kentucky has been thus 
described by a distinguished Kentuckian who followed the cause 
of the Union and served as a Federal soldier: — 

"Accompanied as was this [abolitionist] work of rescuing 
slaves by a violent abuse of slaveholding, it destroyed in 
good part the desire to be rid of the institution which had 
grown on the soil, and gave place to a natural though un- 
reasonable determination to cling to the system against all 
foreign interference." 

And the irritation thus caused was felt even by the class that 
did not own slaves. 31 

The Southampton Insurrection is the central event in The 
Old Dominion, written by the English novelist, G. P. R. James, 
who was in Virginia from 1852 to 1856 after about two years' 
residence in Massachusetts. This book is in part an avowed 
study of Southern slavery, with opportunities for observation 
(as the author himself hints) that few Englishmen ever had. 
Undoubtedly James became familiar with the life and the senti- 
ments of the Virginia in which he lived, and could fairly well 
reconstruct the Virginia of 1831. For reasons best known to 
himself he makes "Mr. Wheatley", a New Englander long resi- 
dent in Virginia, the chief spokesman of Southern views. Just 
before the insurrection the English hero of the tale (which is 
told in the first person) has a talk with Mr. Wheatley about an 
abolitionist harangue which they have heard at a camp-meeting. 



29 Letter appended to speech of March 7, 1850,111 E. P. Whipple's Great 
Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster. 

30 Swift : Garrison, p. 93. 

31 N. S. Shaler : Kentucky, p. 198. As to Virginia, see Munford : Virginia's 
Attitude, pp. 51-59. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 17 

Part of this dialogue may be of interest here. The Englishman 
having expressed surprise that the people had listened patiently 
to doctrines contrary to their institutions, Mr. Wheatley says: — 

" 'Oh, you are quite mistaken as to our state of feeling. 
Virginia is well-nigh an abolition State. There is hardly a 
man here who would not emancipate all his slaves, if he 
could do so without utter ruin to himself and grave danger 
to the State ' 

" 'I should think,' I replied, 'if the Negroes hear many 
more such sermons as that of the Rev. Mr. McGrubber, they 
will take the matter into their own hands and free themselves 
with^yengeance. ' 

" 'There is the danger,' answered Mr. Wheatley, more 
gravely than was customary with him. 'Not that an insur- 
rection of the slaves could ever be successful in this coun- 
try. . . . But what I apprehend is that my fanatical friends of 
the North, not content with letting public opinion, which all 
tends towards emancipation, work its way quietly, will go a 
step too far, and either instigate the Negroes to some sud- 
den outbreak, or else create a reaction in public sentiment by 
their irritating diatribes. Men may be led who will not be 
driven, and, let me tell you, you can't drive a Virginian. 
You have seen to-night how much these people will bear 
quietly when it takes the form of argument, but there can 
be no doubt that such men as this McGrubber are even now 
circulating incendiary pamphlets amongst the slaves, which 
are read to little knots of them by anyone who can read. 
In other instances, the same principles are spread by pic- 
tures and horrid bad prints — a sort of hieroglyphic aboli- 
tionism; and if this is carried too far, the tendency to 
emancipation will be extinguished at once, and every man 
will arm himself to resist to the death.' " 32 

To Garrison's policy emancipation as proposed in Virginia 
was repugnant. He maintained as irreducible his demand for 
immediate and unconditional abolition. With apparent pride 
he said of the American Anti-Slavery Society that it "has never 
had any character except for fanaticism and never can have any, 
safely, until the trumpet of jubilee sounds throughout the 
land". 33 If due credit for consistency and steady purpose is 

32 G. P. R. James: The Old Dominion, pp. 124-126. 
33 Library of Original Sources, Vol. IX, p. 101. 



1 8 The Southern Attittide Toward Slavery 

granted to him and to his associates, it yet appears that they 
not only helped to create the atmosphere of war, but contributed 
to the baffling of Southern efforts to do away with slavery. 
"The children of intermeddling are strife and murder", said 
the obnoxious but truthful Vallandigham. 

In his able work, The Great Illusion, Mr. Norman Angell 
writes: — 

"Great and penetrating as were many of the minds of 
antiquity, none of them shows much conception of any 
condition of society in which the economic impulse could 
replace physical compulsion. Had they been told that the 
time would come when the world would work very much 
harder under the impulse of an abstract thing known as 
economic interest, they would have regarded such a state- 
ment as that of a mere sentimental theorist. Indeed one 
need not go so far; if one had told an American slave-holder 
of sixty years ago that the time would come when the South 
would produce more cotton under the free pressure of 
economic forces than under slavery he would have made a 
like reply. He would probably have declared that 'a good 
cowhide whip beats all economic pressure', etc." 3i 

I do not pretend to know how the great minds (or, for that 
matter, the laborious slaves) of antiquity would have received 
Mr. Norman Angell's prophet of a world to come of harder work, 
but in the South a seer of the kind would not necessarily have 
been rebuffed with a rude cowhide flourish. Provided that he 
was fairly well introduced and, above all, that he came not as a 
moral warrior from without, panoplied in self-righteousness and 
brandishing abolitionist pictures and tracts, he would have found 
many a slaveholder willing politely to argue the point or even 
to prophesy courteously with or against him. The Southerners 
were fond of argument and not a little given to prophecy. Not 
all their prophets were trustworthy, but here and there was a 
man whose prediction might have been as close to the spirit of 
truth as this forecast made by Mr. Norman Angell about 1910:— 

:i4 Norman Angell : The Great Illusion, pp. 269.-270. For remarks con- 
cerning factors in the production of cotton after emancipation, see Walter 
L. Fleming's Documentary History of Reconstruction^ ol. II, pp. 311-312. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 19 

"Take the case of what is reputed (quite wrongly, incident- 
ally) to be the most military nation in Europe — Germany. 
The immense majority of adult Germans — practically all who 
make up what is known as Germany — have never seen a bat- 
tle, and in all human probability never will see one 

• As already pointed out, the men who really give tone to the 
German nation, to German life and conduct — that is to say, 
the majority of adult Germans — have never seen a battle, 
and never will see one." 35 

Although long an American citizen, Mr. Norman Angell is 
English by birth, and perhaps he should know that the best field 
for an economic missionary and prophet seeking martrydom 
would have been the British West Indies, and not in the time of 
slavery, but after emancipation — that is, in the language of the 
English historian Froude, after "we practised our virtues vicari- 
ously at their expense". 36 That was indeed barren ground for the 
seed "of the free pressure of economic forces". The very word 
'free' was wormwood to the planters of Jamaica bereft of labor- 
ers for their fields; and it is to be feared that the emancipated, 
living at ease upon earth's spontaneous fruits and vexed neither 
with rent nor with tailor's bills, would have laughed at the no- 
tion that they were working harder under the "abstract thing 
known as economic interest" than they had worked under com- 
pulsion. 

The remarks quoted from The Great Illusion follow a gloomy 
consideration of Roman slavery, and it is possible that Roman 
slavery and Southern slavery were not so far apart in the author's 
mind. It is precisely of Roman slavery, however, that the 
great historian Lecky remarks: "Isolated acts of great cruelty 
undoubtedly occurred ; but public opinion strongly reprehended 
them, and Seneca assures us that masters who ill-treated their 
slaves were pointed at and insulted in the streets"; 37 and so far 
as this goes, Lecky might almost have been speaking of South- 
ern slavery. In the South public opinion — powerful there as in 
all the rest of this country — discountenanced cruelty to slaves, 



35 The Great Illusion, pp. 217, 225. 

36 James Anthony Froude : The English in the West Indies, p. 371. 

37 W. E. H. Lecky: History of European Morals, Vol. I, p. 304. 



20 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

and in aggravated cases odium rested upon families for the brutal 
deeds of individuals. In a letter sent from Natchez in 1831 to 
one of his brothers in Maine, Seargent S. Prentiss, after four 
years' residence in Mississippi, wrote: "To be sure, there are, 
occasionally, men who treat their slaves cruelly and inhumanly 
— but they are not countenanced by society, and their conduct 
is as much reprobated as it would be anywhere." 38 In his work 
on Mississippi J. F. H. Claiborne says: "The cruel master lost 
all social position, and public opinion operated more strongly 
than the special enactments which, in every State, provided for 
humane treatment of slaves." 39 The English abolitionist, Har- 
riet Martineau, though she detested slavery and discovered much 
in the South that shocked her, was surprised by the kindness 
and patience of the whites in dealing with their slaves, and it is 
worthy of note that both she and the more open-minded G. P. R. 
James found that Northerners and foreigners were reputed to be 
the most exacting masters, because they imperfectly understood 
the Negro character or were unwilling to put up with some of its 
peculiarities. The wise and brilliant Virginius Dabney, who 
demonstrated in The Story of Don Miff his understanding of 
Negroes (and who, by the way, was understood and liked by them 
at sight), once said that his sympathy extended to the lazy but 
good-natured variety of the class called 'trifling'. His sister, 
Mrs. Susan Dabney Smedes, whose ability to observe what 
went on about her and whose skill in the difficult art of telling 
the truth make her Memorials of a Southern Planter an invalu- 
able record of plantation life, remarks: — 

"When one hires servants and they do not give some sort 
of satisfaction, redress is at hand. The servant is dismissed. 
But with slaves, at Burleigh and with all the good masters 
and mistresses in the South — and I have known very few 
who were not good — there was no redress. 

"It may be thought that Southerners could punish their 
servants, and so have everything go on just as they pleased. 
But he who says this knows little of human nature. 'I can- 



' Memoir of S. S. Prentiss, Vol. I, pp. 107-10S. 

1 J. F. H . Claiborne : Mississippi as a Provim e, Territory and State, p. 1 45 . 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 21 

not punish people with whom I associate every day', Thomas 
Dabney said, and he expressed the sentiment of thousands 
of other slave-owners. It was true that discipline had some- 
times to be used, but not often ; in very many instances only 
once in a lifetime, and in many more, never. George Page, 
who in his youth, and in his middle age, was about his 
master's person and knew him well, said, 'Master is a heap 
more strict with his children than he is with his servants. 
He does not overlook things in his children like he does in 
his people'. 

"Apart from the humane point of view, common-sense, 
joined with that great instructor, responsibility, taught slave- 
owners that very little can be effected by fear of punishment. 

"Fear and punishment only tend to harden the rebellious 
heart. What then was to be done with a grown servant 
who was too lazy or too ill-tempered to do half work, with 
abundant and comfortable support insured whether the work 
was done or not? It is clear that unless the moral nature 
could be appealed to, that servant had to be endured." 40 

Mrs. Smedes adds that a bad master was "universally execrated". 
And Moncure D. Conway says: — 

"No cruelty to negroes occurred in the houses or on the 
farms of any families in which we were intimate. Servants 
were sometimes flogged, but with no more severity and with 
less frequency than white children." 41 

The trouble, however, with Mr. Norman Angell's remark is 
not merely the implication of cruelty, but also the assumption 
(by no means restricted to him) that a slaveholder would naturally 
whip away as unworthy of consideration a proposal inconsistent 
with the system to which he was used and with his supposedly 
narrow view of things. Once a slaveholder, always a slaveholder. 
Thus Mrs. Frances Trollope and the poet Thomas Moore under- 
took to exhibit Thomas Jefferson simply as an outrageously 
brutal master of slaves. The man who for twenty years was his 
steward and overseer said that Jefferson was indulgent and 
"could not bear to have a servant whipped, no odds how much 
he deserved it". 42 But another important truth is that he was 

i0 Mrs. Smedes : Southern Planter, pp. 190-191. 
a Conway : Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 28. 
42 Curtis: The True Thomas Jefferson, p. 87. 



22 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

an enlightened man seeking more enlightenment, glad to discuss 
means of getting rid of slavery — glad, moreover, and usually fit, 
to discuss any matter of interest to mankind, from religion to 
the manufacture of nails. To be sure, such men as Jefferson 
are rare anywhere, but he had able and well-educated slaveholding 
contemporaries who shared both his wish to do away with 
slavery and his zeal for enlightenment. Among later planters 
of the South the average of intelligence was not low, while edu- 
cation was more widespread than in Jefferson's day. These men 
thought and read and travelled. They were concerned in what- 
ever could improve their property or increase production, and 
many of them showed signal ability in the general management 
of great plantations, as well as resourcefulness and shrewd in- 
ventiveness in details. They took an active and sincere interest 
in the affairs of government, and one of the worst results of the 
war was the wiping out of their wholesome political influence. 
The world has not often known a large class more solidly good 
or a large agricultural class more intelligent. To suppose that 
they could not or would not consider the case of free labor 
versus slave labor is to suppose that they could not or would not 
see what was going on before their eyes. What was there to 
prevent Virginia from knowing as much about Pennsylvania as 
Pennsylvania knew about Virginia? 

The following description of the condition of slaves in his 
region was written at or near Natchez in 1800 by William Dunbar, 
one of the early cotton-planters, who was commended to Thomas 
Jefferson as the first character in his part of the world for 
"science, probity and general information": — 

"With regard to the condition of slaves here there is no 
country where they are better treated. They are supplied 
with winter and summer clothing of good material, heavy 
blankets, and hats and shoes. This is a fine country for 
stock, and it is easy to ration our hands with plenty of pork 
and beef. They are often allowed to raise hogs for them- 
selves, and every thrifty slave has his pig-pen and poultry- 
house. They have as much bread, and usually milk and 
vegetables, as they wish, and each family has a lot of ground 
and the use of a team, for melons, potatoes, etc. In the 
cotton-picking season all that they gather over the usual 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 23 

task of seventy-five or eighty pounds a day, they are re- 
warded for. 

"They have no night work and are provided with comfort- 
able quarters and the unrestricted use of fuel. In lower 
Louisiana the life of the slave, perhaps, is not so easy. 
Owing to their numbers stricter discipline is maintained, 
but the Spanish laws require humane treatment for them, 
and prescribe the holidays they are entitled to." 43 

As the century advanced the general treatment of the slaves 
did not become harsher or more parsimonious, although the care 
of them pressed more and more heavily upon the planters' 
resources. 

As the Southern slaves of the nineteenth century were not 
born free and did not achieve freedom by their own exertions, 
it seems that freedom was thrust upon them." This does not 
mean necessarily that they were emancipated against their will 
(although that is true of many of them), but it fairly raises a 
question whether they had any definite and compelling wish for 
freedom. There is no doubt that some independent spirits 
among them chafed under restraint and yearned for liberty, but 
that the slaves in general were not stimulated by an ardent wish 
to be free seems clear from their conduct during the war. Their 
fidelity to their masters throughout the four years of a struggle 
which at almost any time they could have ended, or at least 
interrupted, by a revolt, is a fact destructive of the notion that 
they were radically disaffected. Their faithfulness may not 
safely be imputed to mere stupidity, for in the emergency of 
the war it was the most intelligent among them who were chosen 
and especially trusted as agents and exemplars. 45 Nor is it 



^Claiborne: Mississippi, pp. 144-145. 

44 It has been said that the Negro's civil rights were not won, but almost 
forced upon him. — William Archibald Dunning: Reconstruction, Vol. XXII 
of The American Nation: a History, p. 213. 

45 After his withdrawal from the U. S. Senate in January, 1861, Jefferson 
Davis visited his plantation to prepare for an indefinite absence. He con- 
ferred with the Negroes on the place, advising them of their duties and re- 
sponsibilities, and saying to those in whose judgment and loyalty he had 
most confidence : "You may have to defend your mistress and her children, 



24 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

plausible that the slaves were eager for freedom and yet so cowed 
and palsied from maltreatment that throughout the South they 
neglected (with insignificant exceptions) for four years the 
opportunity offered by the absence of most of the able-bodied 
whites from the plantations. It is more reasonable, after giving 
due weight to custom, discipline and the example set by the 
higher servants, to put their conduct upon the plane of loyalty 
and goodwill. 

The question is not how others think the slaves should have 
felt or how others would have felt in their place, but how they 
themselves actually felt. One of the Grimke sisters, who, as 
South Carolinians, were trump cards in the abolitionist hand, 
is said to have remarked that, although she was brought up in 
the midst of slavery and had talked with hundreds of well-treated 
slaves, she had never found one who did not wish to be free. 
I do not know under what circumstances this remark was made, 
but the degree of its significance depends largely upon the 
manner in which the wish of the slaves was made known to 
Miss Grimke. 

If large numbers of slaves spontaneously asserted to her such a 
wish, her experience was interesting and uncommon. The slaves 
who felt discontent were not given to manifesting it so openly. 
For this or that reason an individual might wish his freedom, 
and ordinarily he could discuss the matter with his master, who 
would then come to a decision upon what seemed to him the 
merits of the case. But anything like a concerted or general 
aspiration of the kind would have been looked upon with sus- 
picion and disfavor by the most considerate master, unless he 
was already prepared to emancipate his slaves. Even a tentative 
declaration of independence by a body of slaves would have been 
analogous to a hint of mutiny at sea, and the white captains of 
the South had no intention to surrender control to their black 
crews. The slaves knew where the line was drawn, and therefore 



and I feel I may trust you." — Armistead C. Gordon : Jefferson Davis, pp. 124- 
125. As to the general loyalty of the slaves, see Memorials of a Southern 
Planter, pp. 313-314; Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. I, pp. 
257-258; Ballagh: History of Slavery in Virginia, pp. 114-115 ; Booker T. 
Washington: Up from Slavery, pp. 12-13. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 25 

the real lovers of liberty among them and the seriously disaffected 
were secretive. The circumstances of the Southampton Insur- 
rection show how secretive they could be. A small body of Ne- 
groes, moving from house to house and from plantation to plan- 
tation, butchered fifty-five people before the whites knew enough 
of what was going on to organize a resistance. Only the last 
house which the band sought to visit was defended, and in its 
defence Negroes took part, knowing nothing themselves, perhaps, 
of Nat Turner's project. Although Turner's active followers 
were not many, the plot had been brewing long enough to insure 
some knowledge of it on the part of at least a few other Negroes ; 
yet the whites had no warning at all. The whole affair indicates, 
however, that grave disaffection was not widespread. At that 
time the white population of Southampton county was consider- 
ably exceeded by the slave population — to say nothing of the free 
Negroes ; but the insurrection was broken when the band was 
repulsed at the last house. 

If, on the other hand, Miss Grimke (herself an advocate of 
freedom for the slaves) ascertained their wish by questioning 
them, the result of her inquiries is neither surprising nor es- 
pecially important. Most people under restraint or in a subor- 
dinate position would like to be independent, and, if sympathet- 
ically questioned, are likely enough to say as much. But with 
the slaves this natural feeling was qualified by equally natural 
considerations. Usually, the slave who asked for freedom knew 
or thought he knew how he could make both ends meet through 
his own exertions; and usually also the slave to whom freedom 
was offered was chary about the gift until he learned how his 
future was to be assured. Mrs. Smedes tells of two dissatisfied 
Negroes to whom her father offered freedom with a bonus, and 
who rejected the offer because of the stipulation that they should 
never return to the plantation if they left it. 46 In an early chap- 
ter of The Old Dominion James presents the following evidence 
of his qualification to deal with old Virginia: — 

"I heard a loud dispute at the foot of the stairs, and found 
another fellow as black as himself abusing no other person 

46 Mrs. Smedes : Southern Planter, pp. 102-103. 



26 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

than Mr. Zedekiah Jones I did not stop to listen, 

but one vituperative epithet was applied to him by his op- 
ponent which I never should have expected to hear addressed 
by one negro to another. 'You're a damn'd black free 
nigger!' cried the little stumpy fellow who was contending 
with him. 'You're as black as I am,' retorted Zedekiah, 
'and nigger too. I couldn't help being free. Old massa 
'mancipate me whether I like or no.' " 4; 

As a rule, the free Negroes were not nearly so well off as the 
slaves, who, indeed, looked upon the class with contempt. 46 The 
free Negro, if not a man without a country, was at least a man 
without a family — a nobody tied to nobody. The plight of the 
free Negroes in the North was still worse, for they had not even 
the precarious 'pickings' of their Southern brethren. Seargent 
S. Prentiss says of the Mississippi slaves that their situation 
was much preferable to that of the free Negroes who infested the 
Northern cities. 49 In 1844 John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of 
State, wrote in a letter to the British Minister at Washington: — 

"The census and other authentic documents show that, in 
all instances where the States have changed the former re- 
lations between the two races, the condition of the African, 
instead of being improved, has become worse. They have 
invariably sunk into vice and pauperism, accompanied by 
the bodily and mental inflictions incident thereto — deafness, 
blindness, insanity, and idiocy — to a degree without ex- 
ample", etc. 

And Calhoun proceeded to support his statements by statistics. 60 
A slave, therefore, could not expect much from mere freedom 
in either section. 

In a description of the formal emancipation of the slaves on 
the plantation where he himself lived in slavery as a child, Booker 
T. Washington wrote: — 



47 The Old Dominion, p. 12. 

48 Booker T. Washington : Two Generations under Freedom, in The Out- 
look, February 7, 1903, p. 295. 

49 Memoir of S. S. Prentiss, Vol. I, pp. 107-108. 

50 Library of Original Sources, Vol. IX, pp. 114-115. See also Munford : 
Virginia's Attitude, pp. 162-163, 169-174 ; and James : The Old Dominion, pp. 
1 i and 127. It is to be remembered that James spent about two years in the 
North before going to Virginia. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 27 

"The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of 
themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and 

their children seemed to take possession of them 

Was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild re- 
joicing ceased, and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to 
pervade the slave quarters ? To some it seemed that, now 
they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more 

serious thing than they expected to find it As I have 

stated, most of the colored people left the old plantation 
for a short while at least, so as to be sure, it seemed, that 
they could leave and try their freedom on to see how it felt. 
After they had remained away for a time many of the older 
slaves, especially, returned to their old homes and made some 
kind of contract by which they remained on the estate." 51 

The case of the Kentucky slaves in the period of abolitionist 
excitement is significant. In spite of the nearness of a large 
part of the State to free communities and to stations of the 
'underground railroad', the fugitives from Kentucky were few, 
and even in the region along the Ohio River the slaves gen- 
erally remained quietly at home. It has been said that if all the 
slaves in Kentucky had been allowed to wander for six months 
with the option of returning at the end of their leave, three- 
fourths of them would have come back to their homes and to 
their 'yoke'. 

It is, nevertheless, probable that almost everywhere the slave 
felt a rather placid wish to be free and that this feeling, not 
unmixed with a natural longing for mere change of scene and 
circumstance, was strongest with the young. But liberty for 
liberty's sake was not the common goal. Assurance that the 
change would not be for the worse was needed by those mindful 
of their own welfare, who made up the great majority. Apart 
from other considerations, 53 the slaves knew where their bread 



51 Washington : Up from Slavery ; pp. 21-22 and 24. 

52 Prominent among these considerations was the general affection of the 
slaves for their masters and their masters' families. Concerning this see 
Fleming: Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. I, pp. 257-258 ; Bal- 
lagh : History of Slavery in Virginia, pp. 100-101, 114-115. Booker T. Wash- 
ington ( Upfront Slavery, p. 22,) says of the older slaves : "Besides, deep down 
in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to 'Old Marster' 



28 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

was buttered, and generally they bad no difficulty in choosing 
between the humble safety of dry land and the glorious un- 
certainty of the sea of freedom. To Prentiss the slaves seemed 
"fully as happy as their masters". 53 They were, indeed, happier, 
if happiness is to be inferred from evidences of contentment and 
from the disposition and the ability to make the most of a good 
time. Contentment may be an ignoble state, but it is not sub- 
jectively an unhappy one. If the state of most of a population 
numbering millions even approaches contentment, no tears need 
be shed over their lot except by those who would introduce 
among them the loftier standard of discontent. 

Conway says that Thomas Carlyle remarked to him : — 

"I have no dislike of the Negroes. By wise and kindly 
treatment they might have been made into a happy and 
contented laboring population. I do not wish for them any 
condition which I would not under like circumstances wish 
for myself. No man can have anything better than the 
protection and guidance of one wiser and better than him- 
self, who would feed and clothe him and heal him if he were 
sick, and get out of him the exact kind of work that he was 
competent to achieve." M 

Aside from the implication that they were not wisely and 
kindly treated, this remark seems applicable to the condition 
and sentiment of the Southern slaves. That the treatment of 
most of them was kind is beyond reasonable doubt; whether it 
was wise is necessarily a matter of opinion. Yet it is true that 
almost all the equipment of the Southern Negroes for the 
adventure of freedom came from their training as slaves, including 
the practice of useful occupations and trades, the teaching of 
which began at an early day and was conscientiously carried on, 
for instance, by Thomas Jefferson and by his father before him. 
But besides and above these bread-winning arts there was 



and ' Old Missus' and to their children which they found it hard to think of 
breaking off." For evidence of the reluctance of many to leave their masters 
permanently, see Dr. Fleming's admirable Documentary History of Recon- 
struction, Vol. I, pp. 84, 86 ; also Munford : Virginia's Attitude, pp. 70-74. 

53 Memoir of 'S. S. Prentiss, Vol. I, pp. 107-108. 

64 Conway: Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 400. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 29 

acquired a general discipline without which the condition of 
the Negroes after the war would have been even more disastrous 
to themselves and even more a source of danger to others. Booker 
T. Washington says that "the ten million Negroes inhabiting this 
country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the 
school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful 
condition, materially, intellectually, morally and religiously, 
than is true of an equal number of black people in any other 
portion of the globe". Returning to this subject, Washington 
says of his friend Lewis Adams: — 

"I have always felt that Mr. Adams, in a large degree, 
derived his unusual power of mind from the training given 
his hands in the process of mastering well three trades during 
the days of slavery. If one goes to-day [that is, more than 
thirty years after the war's end] into any Southern town 
and asks for the leading and most reliable colored man in 
the community, I believe that in five cases out of ten he 
will be directed to a Negro who learned a trade during the 
days of slavery. ' ' B5 

Those who think that the South would not have dealt with the 
problem of slavery or was not competent to deal with it should 
take some account of the fact that the Negro question is to-day 
mainly a Southern question, to be dealt with mainly by the 
South. The war had as one of its immediate results the end 
of formal slavery 56 and as a remoter result a confusion of Southern 
affairs so intolerable that the burden of the Negro question, 
unsettled rather than settled by the ordeal of battle, was shifted 
back to the people upon whom it rested when all the 'sound 
and fury' began. While the North still kept in its own hands 



55 Washington : Up from Slavery, pp. 16, 121. 

56 Putting an end to slavery changed but did not forthwith abolish the 
Negro's "condition of servitude", which was a fact not to be destroyed by 
proclamations or by any sudden magic of law. Remarks made in strikingly 
similar terms by Carl Schurz and by Frederick Douglass, while not literally 
true, contain an element of truth. Schurz said : "But although the freedman 
is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered 

the slave of society " And Douglass said : "He [the freedman] was free 

from the individual master, but the slave of society."— Fleming : Documen- 
tary History of Reconstruction, Vol. I, pp. 56, 89. 



30 The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 

the remedying of wrongs, the cure called Reconstruction was 
compounded and applied. Of its virtues a former slave has 
written: — 

"Though I was but little more than a youth during the 
period of Reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes 
were being made, and that things could not remain in the 
condition that they were in then very long. I felt that the 
Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was 
in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and 
forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance 
of my race was being used as a tool with which to help 
white men into office, and that there was an element in the 
North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by 
forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the 
Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one 
to suffer for this in the end." 57 

The Negroes were, in fact, among those who suffered and in 
nothing more than in disturbance of the good feeling of slavery 
days. It has been said that in the main the Southern "black 
codes" were conceived in good faith and designed to meet actual 
conditions, whereas certain Federal legislation was enacted 
without regard for facts so far as the freedmen's status in fact 
was concerned. 68 

This article is restricted, so far as has been possible, to con- 
sideration of matters concerning slavery in the nineteenth 
century. I have felt no need to dwell upon the right or wrong of 
slavery in itself. The slaveholders of the last century inherited a 
system planted and deeply rooted before their day. Assuming 
slavery to be and always to have been a sin, what may be called 
the original sin of American slavery is to be imputed to many 
men of many nations; and even those who feel a call to help in 
the divine function of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the 
children might find it hard to distinguish in such a mass the 
guilty fathers of the Southern slaveholders. The people of whom 
I have tried to speak are fairly accountable only for their own 



57 Washington : Up from Slavery, p. 84. 
M Dunning : Reconstruction, pp. 57, 58, 63. 



The Southern Attitude Toward Slavery 31 

management of one of the most embarrassing inheritances that 
ever fell to man. What they might have done of their own 
motion about slavery is now matter for conjecture, the one 
certainty being that things could not long have stayed as they 
were. After serving purposes useful to the outside world as 
well as to the South, slavery had come to be an economic incubus, 
and in that sense at least it was too bad to last. In some other 
ways the old Southern life, including, in certain aspects, the rela- 
tions between masters and slaves, was too good to last. 



